There are no single developer projects

Jul 29 2008 11:07 AM

Oren wrote today, There is no such thing as a single developer project. At first this sounds like an obviously false statement, but read on:

There are always at least two people in any software project:

The developer who wrote the code.
The developer who read the code.

They are never the same person, even if just by temporal dissonance.

This is a very clever thing to point out, and worth remembering when you're tempted to take shortcuts using the excuse "I'm the only one working on this code so I can wing it." Who you are today is not who you were yesterday, nor will you be the same person tomorrow. Write your code with the knowledge that someone else is going to have to maintain it, even if that someone else is you with a bit more experience (and probably a bit of lost knowledge about the details of what you're working on right at this moment).

10 Comments

mr d said on Jul 29 2008 at 7:39 PM

"clever"? you are a retard... and it's "reads" not "read".
G. Andrew Duthie said on Jul 29 2008 at 7:48 PM

I'd have to agree, to the extent that I definitely find myself wanting to revise some things when I look at them at a later date.
And Mr. D...? Grow up.
lol said on Jul 29 2008 at 7:53 PM

mr d: it's read, both statements are past tense.
paolo said on Jul 29 2008 at 9:55 PM

code is written in the past, but is read now. i agree with mr d.
Robz said on Jul 29 2008 at 11:00 PM

I agree. <a target="_blank" href="http://ferventcoder.com/archive/2008/06/11/develop-for-maintenance.aspx">ferventcoder.com/.../develop-for-mai</a>
Aaron Seet said on Jul 30 2008 at 2:08 AM

Ha ha
<a target="_blank" href="http://icelava.net/forums/thread/1196.aspx">icelava.net/.../1196.aspx</a>
ssmith said on Jul 30 2008 at 3:58 AM

For the record, my quotation was direct from the original post, any potential spelling or grammar errors included.
Sonu Kapoor said on Jul 30 2008 at 5:57 AM

I totally agree with Steve!
Brendan Enrick said on Jul 31 2008 at 5:49 AM

Sorry Mr. D, but it is "read" and not "reads" because both statements need to have matching tenses. Because of this they both must be in the past tense where "read" is the accurate one.
I very much agree though. When I read code I've written in the past, I often am surprised by how I've written it.
Nancy Folsom said on Aug 21 2008 at 8:45 AM

< aol > Amen! < /aol >